Keyword Search Evolution

Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 2 of July , 2008 at 10:29 am

Techdirt posted earlier this month to talk about the relatively underwhelming need for Powerset.

We never understood the hype around Powerset. It was the latest in an extremely long line of startups that claimed to focus on “natural language search” — which is one of those holy grails for computer scientists who never stop to ask whether or not there’s actually any market demand for it. As Google has shown, people don’t need to use natural language to search. They’re just fine doing keyword search. Yet, for some unclear reason, Powerset was able to raise a ton of money at a ridiculous valuation, and did so using all sorts of buzzwords (and vague patent threats). But when it finally released a product (just to search Wikipedia) it proved to be rather ho hum. Searching Wikipedia via other means was still more effective.

Many people consider that Natural language searching would only be useful in a two areas:
1. The Jitterbug phone demographic
2. College students caught in a space/time continuum 2 decades ago

The fact is, natural language searches have not become extinct, they have just evolved for the current market. The generations that grew up with an on the internet now think in terms of keywords when they are looking for information. The askjeeves.com search engine tried to go the way of Jeopardy by asking users to search in the form of a question. It turned out to be more difficult to change the innate way people learned to search.
When internet users need to find information, they mostly instinctively form their thoughts by keyword. It was not taught so much as it was learned.

While keyword searches are growing in length, they still average only about 2-3 words. The communication method and the way in which people form searches are much the way toddlers communicate. Short, to the point, and with lot of nouns. A toddler can get his point across by simply yelling “Ball! Purple! Mine!” He doesn’t really need to say “I would like the purple ball for my own.” Just because the other words are missing, it doesn’t mean that the thought process isn’t there.

Keyword searches act in much the same manner. Users haven’t lost their ability to communicate or ask questions or form complete thoughts, they’ve just narrowed down the extraneous words to the ones that will focus the search the most.

I don’t think that natural language searches should be abandoned altogether, though. Someday soon we’ll just ask our computers directly for information, and personally I don’t think I can speak in just keywords. When the time comes for true interaction, natural language searches will have their day.

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Category: Brick Marketing, Local Search Engine Optimization

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